Kitchen rankings, the formal and the vernacular

The best laugh of the morning comes from this week’s Chez Sophie newsletter, penned by co-owner Cheryl Clark. It takes awhile, but the punchline is worth the read:

Cheryl referred to [staffer] John Adams recently as a sergeant in [chef-owner] Paul’s kitchen, but she wondered what his title really is and for that matter, what is Dan Felder? Chez Sophie is a French kitchen, but it’s never been a particularly military environment. People in Chez Sophie’s kitchen have assignments, but they tend to work with all types of foods in a pinch. That’s because neither Sophie nor Paul went to either culinary school or military academy, and the way they cook tends to flow from the way a home cook prepares a meal.

In a formal kitchen, the saucier, or the guy who makes sauce, would be the third ranking person, but at Chez Sophie, Executive Chef Paul makes the sauces because he’s especially good at it. Souschef Mark Graham works on vegetable creations and plate presentation even though those are not a particularly souschef-y things to do, because he does it very well.

Cheryl asked Mark, who was standing closest at the time, to define John, and he said: “He’s a front-line soldier.”

“But what is his role technically?” Cheryl asked, to which Mark responded: “Victim, usually.”

Moving on, she asked Paul. “Chef cuisinier.” O.K. That works.

It turns out that Dan is also a chef cuisinier, but in a very different role in Paul’s kitchen. John primarily works on non-proteins and Dan primarily works on proteins. So in a classic French kitchen, John would be an entremetier (vegetable cook) and Dan would be a grillardin (grill guy) and rotisseur (roasting guy) and poissonier (fish cook). But sometimes Dan and John tread into the land of potager (soup chef), butcher commis (general slave) and friturier (fry cook). They seldom do the jobs of patissier (pastry maker) or boulanger (bread baker) or confiseur (candy maker) because that’s the province of garde manger, Brian Netzel.

Only the French would have so many words for what Americans would simply describe as chef or cook. Forgive us for this, but Paul translates this into American thusly: “Dan is MY bitch, John is MARK’S bitch and Brian — well, Brian is just a bitch.”